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Gallup, you make several good points. I just hope that by November of 2016, the low information US electorate doesn't react to what many perceive as Obama's "liberal" 8 years by electing a (neo)conservative dingbat whose Supreme Court and lower court picks make Antonin Scalia look like Rachel Maddow.

You're spot on, but that's just the thing: because the Republicans see themselves losing due to this shift, they're actively considering and endorsing some major changes to the way states award Electoral College votes. If swing states like VA, PA, WI, and OH go the way of Maine and Nebraska, which award Electoral College votes by the winners of congressional district, then we could have a problem with either a "smart liar" or an "honest dingbat" because either could easily be sent to the White House despite a loss of the popular, increasingly progressive, vote. VA just drafted such a state bill, but at least Bob McDonnell, VA's Republican governor, along with a couple other key state Republicans, seems opposed to the idea. One of the most cogently written pieces I've seen on the flaws in VA's recent proposal to award Electoral College votes this way is at Real Clear Politics:

Every party gerrymanders, every politician abuses his or her authority, yet there's something particularly insidious about VA's Republicans' latest actions. Your points are well taken about the progressive shift of the electorate--makes me think of Dawkins' frequent references to the evolving moral zeitgeist of different periods of history--but, just as an animal is often most unpredictably dangerous after it's been wounded, the more furtive and cynical Republicans at the state level, cheered by Reince Priebus at the national level, are poised to strike back at their recent losses and looming decline by lashing out at our voting system itself. Just look at their efforts to restrict early voting and military voting, to enact draconian voter ID laws, their closing of polling places in poor and minority areas, etc.

My high school principal, (1969) called me to the office a few weeks before graduation to tell me that "no atheist, communist, was gonna graduate from his school!" (I was not then, nor have I ever been a member of the communist party.) So, I contacted the ACLU who wrote him a nice letter after which he was most supportive of my graduating

I would be willing, with about a 1000 of my closest friends, to take this oath, after extensive legal advise of course:

"I of generally sound mind and functional intelligence, promise, along with my peers and fellow citizens, to never again offer any intellectual suspect Republican or Democratic candidate, my vote, support, or signature gathering, if they continue to pursue laws, ordinances, or mandates, that obviously would fail on constitutional grounds, or create second class, and marginalize any members of the electoret."